"Parting The Waters" - January 31, 2020

[Bird Lives]

I'm so disappointed with myself for not getting this. I figured what the answer would be -- the only other ten letter appetizer starting with water I could think of was gulf shrimp -- but didn't submit since I hadn't really solved it. Anyway, I will now add bad puns to the "things to look for when solving the meta" folder.

[Wendy Walker]

Among my crazier rabbit holes:
-- the cast of the Ocean's 11 movies ("parts")
-- seafood preparation methods (with garlic, en croute, lemon butter)
-- number of times that certain letters appear in the theme answers, the theme clues, the words in quotation marks, the ENTIRE BLOODY GRID
-- geographical coordinates
-- Latin names of the specified critters
-- body "parts" in the grid (lips, hip, rib, aorta)

Nephew spotted CHESS APEAK, then after some more study of the grid saw "ARK" and asked if there was a "TICK" anywhere. You can imagine how my heart sang!
Matt, did you deliberately put "SOUND" into the clues three times (1A, 33A, 48D)?

[KayW]

I saw CHESS + APEAK Thursday night, but also got sucked into the ERIE trap for far too long and didn't see any of the others. I was also stuck on using the number pairs to break the bodies of waters into two parts - e.g. CHES + APEAKE as 4 + 6 rather than using the 4th and 6th letters of the result, so for ocean I thought it HAD to be PACIFIC as the only (2+5) 7-letter ocean. The fact that there was no F anywhere in the grid didn't shake me off that completely. Even after a friend hit me over the head with the second step 2-by-4, it wasn't until after I saw SPRING ROLL that it dawned on me that the parted waters were spelled phonetically in the grid. I saw the TIC in TICK but was still thinking the correctly spelled substrings had to be in the puzzle, did not see ATLAN or ARC, oblivious to the phonetic ARK.

All I can say is I won't miss that trick again - at least not for the next month or so

Very very clever.

[KayW]

Matt, did you deliberately put "SOUND" into the clues three times (1A, 33A, 48D)?

ooh... nice! I missed that as well.

[Geoduck]

CHEE APEAK stood out, and I found YELL OWE and ARK TICK but got sidetracked by EERIER. And I did not identify an algorithm that would connect any of these to the numbers in parentheses (especially EERIER, for the obvious reason).

**sigh**

[SeanS]

Is this really only a 3.5 star difficulty? If so, good to know-- anything rated over "3" I'll give myself no more than an hour and continue to study the answers on Mondays until I have a better understanding of how these folks think. Feel like a high school baseball player standing in against Randy Johnson sometimes.

[Inca]

Another reel grate meta. Ewe can take a bough now, Mat! Well dun.
And thanks for putting the chess and apeak close to each other, which first caught my eye and
tuned me in to the method. Gotta luv this language which gives us all these homophones to have fun with.
Others have said here that when the themers have something in common, the meta answer will have that similarity. Spring roll came to mind right away.
And Muggles, do not panic when you see those dreaded pairs of numbers with the themer clues- just ignore them at first. They are there only to help you once you have figured out the method by other means, as in this case.

Spring is water, is roll a fish? So much I don't know

[Abide]

#156Post by BrianMac » Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:19 pm

Abide wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:02 pm

Started this morning; after 30 minutes had a reasonable backsolve answer. Reading comments confirmed backsolve answer was right. Then spent two hours figuring out how to make it work!

Trying to wrap my head around this. I would love to hear a more detailed explanation after the deadline.

***
First assumption: the appetizer will have a body of water at the start. Wiki: Body of Water---Bayou, cove, channel, gulf, pond, stream, SPRING. SPRING ROLLS seemed right, but there are 10 numbers in parens. Singular SPRINGROLL sounds better than GULFOYSTER or GULFSHRIMP. Wendy's comment that it was on her menu confirmed SPRINGROLL for me. But how to make it fit? Eventually I made a hangman style grid next to the theme entries, inserting my proposed answer. So next to OCEANPERCH (2,5) I had _ R _ _ I _ ---. That seemed to fit ARCTIC. Ten minutes later I plugged in Chesapeake. Only 20 minutes later did I see CHESS and APEAK. It still took another 30 minutes to find the other three in the grid.

[Hidden in 3D]

Like many others, I saw CHESS/APEAK early on and knew it had to be part of the solution. (I would have been ashamed of myself had I not seen that - the summers of my childhood were spent swimming off this bay's shores and boating on its waters!) I just had too many commitments and distractions over the weekend to search for the other bodies of water. Congrats to all you Muggles who persevered and especially those of you who were on shore within an hour or two of the puzzle being posted!!

[Dplass]

Nope, never would have gotten that.

The thing that bothered me with the solution (a friend gave me a HUGE tip. Full disclosure: I did not submit.) was that all the themers were <body of water> + <animal name>. E.g., "lake salmon".

I fully expected - nay - DEMANDED - that the solution be <body of water> + <animal name>.

Pshaw/getoffmylwan.

[MarkL]

Is this really only a 3.5 star difficulty? If so, good to know-- anything rated over "3" I'll give myself no more than an hour and continue to study the answers on Mondays until I have a better understanding of how these folks think. Feel like a high school baseball player standing in against Randy Johnson sometimes.

A left-hand hitting freshman, at that!

[damefox]

Is this really only a 3.5 star difficulty?

I give this a 4.5. Anything where you have to match sounds instead of exact words is way up there on the difficulty meter for me, especially when there's no indication in the title or any of the clues that that's the mechanism.

[Janet P]

I'm geographically challenged so I'm not sure I would have gotten this one without seeing CHESS and APEAK practically adjacent in the grid, which was a nice touch. The first time through I had YELLOW SEA instead of YELLOW RIVER, and I finally had to guess and backsolve to get the actual sea and lake. Seemed like there was a lot of potential for ambiguity (a lot of of oceans end in TICK, did I get the right one?) but it did all work out.

While I'm definitely not geographically challenged, I followed almost exactly the same path! That is, after I spent Thursday evening and all of Friday trying to backsolve from SPINACH DIP. I have never had SPRING ROLL and wasn't even completely sure it was an appetizer until Mr. G. confirmed it.
On Saturday, once I got to 60% with CHESS+APEAK, ARK+TICK, and YELL+OWE (which I also initially plugged in for SEA) I was just plain frustrated. Then on Sunday, I typed all 66 remaining grid answers into a spread sheet with two columns to manipulate and looked for letter combinations that might work.
It was a fun solve but definitely took more determination than usual!
Here's hoping a muggle gets that wonderful email

[BethA]

Matt, did you deliberately put "SOUND" into the clues three times (1A, 33A, 48D)?

ooh... nice! I missed that as well.

Glad to HEAR this! That was the one thing that was bothering me about what otherwise seemed really elegant. Thought there should have been some cryptic type hint that we should use phonetics. Never noticed all those SOUNDS!

[spotter]

I kept coming back to ERIE, but never made the leap. There were a few comments here that they saw a rabbit and it turned out to be right, just not in the way they originally anticipated. I'm guessing that it was because ERIE was relevant, but as SOUPEERIER?

3 misses in a row for me! I've got the yips! I'll try again on Thursday!

[boharr]

I spent so much time on the boat with Isaac this week, that I've come to suspect that he has Mike and Matt's numbers (or at least their numbers in parens).

[Jacksull]

Congratulations to the solvers. I hope the mug goes to a Muggle this week.

I’m terrible with puns and vocal wordplay, so it’s no surprise that I missed this week. Maybe it’s related to my tin ear and lack of musical ability.

[Thurman8er]

Never in a million years. From now on, if there is a puzzle that looks even remotely connected to geography of any kind, I'll set it aside.

[Joe Ross]

#156Post by BrianMac » Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:19 pm

Abide wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:02 pm

Started this morning; after 30 minutes had a reasonable backsolve answer. Reading comments confirmed backsolve answer was right. Then spent two hours figuring out how to make it work!

Trying to wrap my head around this. I would love to hear a more detailed explanation after the deadline.

***
First assumption: the appetizer will have a body of water at the start. Wiki: Body of Water---Bayou, cove, channel, gulf, pond, stream, SPRING. SPRING ROLLS seemed right, but there are 10 numbers in parens. Singular SPRINGROLL sounds better than GULFOYSTER or GULFSHRIMP. Wendy's comment that it was on her menu confirmed SPRINGROLL for me. But how to make it fit? Eventually I made a hangman style grid next to the theme entries, inserting my proposed answer. So next to OCEANPERCH (2,5) I had _ R _ _ I _ ---. That seemed to fit ARCTIC. Ten minutes later I plugged in Chesapeake. Only 20 minutes later did I see CHESS and APEAK. It still took another 30 minutes to find the other three in the grid.

This is a whole-world-championship solve! Bravo!

[Joe Ross]

Is this really only a 3.5 star difficulty? If so, good to know-- anything rated over "3" I'll give myself no more than an hour and continue to study the answers on Mondays until I have a better understanding of how these folks think. Feel like a high school baseball player standing in against Randy Johnson sometimes.

A left-hand hitting freshman, at that!

Great analogy and offer me swinging 5 seconds ahead of a Pedro Martinez change-up, three times, screwing into the dirt, like on a classic Looney Tunes.

"Strike one! Strike two! Strike three! Yer out!"